


Stay

by Lykotheia



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 08:16:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lykotheia/pseuds/Lykotheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After they defeat Gyumaoh, Hakkai and Gojyo get to go <i>home</i>, but where does that leave Goku?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this two or three years ago, so hopefully since then my writing style has improved, but perhaps it's not so far gone that I cannot post it here. I don't do Saiyuki fics anymore, but at the time, I really liked this one.

Sunlight filtered through the windows and over his bedding, sprinkled liberally in golden drops, like pollen. This was the first time Goku could ever remember seeing Sanzo still amongst the sheets at such an hour. Pity, since he looked so beautiful like that, face at ease, fair lashes dusting arched cheekbones. His hair was on fire with the morning’s glow, and Goku risked dusting his fingertips through the outgrown mane, stroking his forehead gently because he doubted he would wake.

He went through their new, temporary morning ritual, invigorated with hope as he gazed out the wide window. It was springtime, after all, cool but not cold, and everything was bursting with new life. From his vantage point he could see only green hills and azure skies, but knew that the window gave out onto the west side, and directly below would be the gate to the courtyard and garden. For once, he didn’t think of food with longing.

A breeze would have ruffled curtains if there were any, but instead flipped up the fringes of the bedding and whistled against stone walls. Distantly he smelled violets and the peach tree’s blossoms, and thought Sanzo might like it if he brought him one, even if it was only to throw. 

Water lapped gently at the porcelain sides of a crazed and faintly patterned basin; it was lukewarm to the touch, and scented with lavender and some other, richer perfume that he couldn’t make out. It reminded him of a toned-down version of what the monks burned in prayer. Wringing a cloth out, he brought it down over a smooth forehead and straight nose, bathing Sanzo’s face and neck against the slight fever he’d picked up, lest it slow the healing process.

It was strange, caring for him this way, without Sanzo awake to rebuke him for his tenderness, or for touching him at all. It wasn’t as though Goku had been the one to wash him of the blood and gore the first time—Hakkai had done that himself, and came still, daily, to treat his wounds with what energy he could. But even a recumbent and reasonably motionless body had to be washed more than once a week, and Goku had thenceforth taken it upon himself to do so. It was the least he could, after all.

The water felt chilly on his skin after a while with the window open, so he ran a fluffy towel over Sanzo’s face and throat shortly after, trailing his thumb gently under the intrados of his eye. The white robe he wore, as pristine as the newly-changed sheets, was folded back carefully at the chest, baring scarred and stitched skin; Goku was especially careful not to upset the angry red glow that patched an otherwise flawless ivory. He resisted carefully the urge to sweep a kiss over the markings; Sanzo would not appreciate it, if he knew. 

He bathed his abdomen and arms, mourning silently his condition; he could all but count his ribs. Sanzo needed to eat more, but was hardly awake long enough to do it. Hakkai said sleeping meant he was healing, and that he should feed him what he could in the brief windows of opportunity that arose. Goku kept a bowl of rice and double-boiled legumes for just such an occasion, mayonnaise on the side. 

When his hands grazed Sanzo’s thighs, the man made a soft sound, and his brows twitched; Goku glanced to make sure he hadn’t brushed a wound. Hakkai had spent a great deal of time on the artery that ran near his inner thigh, which was how he lost most of the blood. Goku supposed it hurt very much, but still he didn’t wake up. He remembered Hakkai’s advice, _Let him heal._

Sanzo had always been a light sleeper, but wounded as he was, he would rise only on his own time. He’d done it four times since Lady Kanzeon brought him back, twice for water, once for food, and once, the first time, for Goku. Bloody as he’d been, by the time they’d lain him down in bed at Keiun, he was recognizable, even if he’d still looked dead. Hakkai was pouring energy into him and Gojyo was disinfecting wounds he’d clumsily sutured on the field, using a base alcohol and warm water from the temple well, for lack of anything better. They commanded Goku to hold him down, though he knew they were only trying to keep him from pacing maddeningly back and forth. Sanzo hadn’t had the strength to push himself up, never mind buck them off. He hadn’t even opened his eyes. 

Goku remembered the hasty panic of the scene, trying to keep him alive even though he’d already lost so much blood. Hakkai was dripping hot sweat through his shirt, and Gojyo’s nicks and lacerations were staining the clean edges of the bedding. Both were intent on their work, and Goku was left to look on. He couldn’t shake the image of Sanzo’s face from his mind, completely slack, but not in a good way, like when he slept or smoked late into the night. His pallor was sickly and made his skin look like wax; Goku hadn’t realized he was crying until he saw teardrops fall and break over a blood-red chakra, and violet eyes cracked open to look up at him. He’d hardly seemed to be breathing, but he must have been, because his eyes were still bright with life. The other two didn’t notice, and Sanzo wasn’t looking at them anyway. He frowned, Goku thought, and opened his dry mouth in a soft breath. Even with his heightened senses, he couldn’t hear what the monk was saying, but he could read his lips. 

_Stupid saru_. There might have been a smile there, had he been able to manage it. Goku realized Sanzo was responding not to his tears, but to the panicked litany of prayers resounding in his head. 

_Please don’t leave me, Sanzo. Please don’t leave me alone—I need you. Please stay with me._

Their efforts were not in vain, though after Gojyo carted a half-conscious Hakkai to recuperate in a separate chamber, Sanzo was still faring poorly. On death’s doorstep, he’d once heard Hakkai say, and that was just how the monk looked at that moment. His breath would not have stirred a feather, and the blood soaking into the sheets and dripping down onto the floor where they’d brought him in made the room reek like iron and dirt. Goku kept vigil all night, and again through the day, miraculously relieved of the need to sleep by his desperation. Gojyo had offered to take a turn, once he’d convinced himself Hakkai was well, but he was refused. 

After four days Sanzo was stable, but drained. Hakkai had closed most of the wounds and stitched them to be sure, but his abilities did not extend so far as to create blood for him. 

“He will have to rest constantly; he has virtually no energy, and that I cannot give him,” the healer murmured as if in apology. As if Goku didn’t already owe him his life tenfold. 

“But he’s gonna be okay?” 

“I think so,” Hakkai said, politely accepting a cup of tea from one of the monks, grateful because the healer had saved their Sanzo’s life, and because they didn’t know he was a demon. Gojyo had waited outdoors. 

Giving him instructions and loaning him Hakuryu—in lieu of a messenger pigeon, he’d jested—he told Goku to get some rest and alert him at once if anything were to happen. 

He left with Gojyo, and Goku watched them walk down the long, serpentine path of stones and grass that would eventually take them to a town in the distance, out of sight. He stayed put at the wide sill, crouched inches from a twenty-foot drop, and waited until they drowned in the landscape before turning back to Sanzo. He envied them both, but not because they got to leave—he’d never wanted to be anywhere else, himself. But because they got to leave _together._

Goku had always pretended he didn’t know or notice, because the idea of explaining it to him seemed to fluster Hakkai, and he didn’t have any desire to speak to Gojyo of it. They must think him a child, despite his twenty-two and some five hundred years. But all the same he knew; they smelled like one another, and that wasn’t all. He noticed when they started touching each other, a brush of hands, nudging of shoulders as they began to walk closer, lean to one another when conversing. It was easy to envy, especially knowing he couldn’t have it. 

_But I have this_. The washcloth dropped with a plop back into the basin, and he smiled despite himself. Sanzo couldn’t love him—not the way he wanted—but he still wanted him there. He had to—who else would take care of him? The thought that he would cast him out, or leave himself, once recovered, was beyond comprehension. 

Drying damp skin, he ran his fingertips gently over Sanzo’s cheek, the lightest grazing of flesh, and then withdrew, knowing it to be a trespass. In good time, too; the doors creaked open and two robed monks came in with a small bow, even though their leader was unconscious. They took the water bowl and looked hopelessly at the tray of food that had been left much earlier that morning. Goku frowned and gave them a shrug, as if to say ‘maybe today.’ 

But it wasn’t. Sanzo only shifted twice, and never woke. Goku pressed a damp cloth to his lips, remembering that once he’d woken for water, but to no avail. The glowing morning faded into an equally pleasant afternoon, and when the sun set, stars came out as if on call, all at once in a dizzying diamond spiral. Goku watched them from his perch on the sill, and he watched Sanzo. 

Just when he had dozed off he wasn’t certain, but there came to him the same nightmare that plagued him each time he closed his eyes. They were back at Houtou castle, and Gyumaoh was alive. Very much so, his aura crackling in the air; blows of ki thrice the size of Hakkai’s and ten times the power thundered across the plains and scorched the earth in its wake. The great demon’s presence seemed to make the sky and moon glow red, the rest of the land turning to gray.

It was a messy battle that he only half-remembered. Gojyo and Hakkai had exchanged looks, and the healer had discarded his limiters, leaving his friend and lover to control him, or keep out of his way. Sanzo’s banishing gun was not enough despite his perfect aim, and at some point he must have unleashed the sutra. Goku remembered everything right up until he had been knocked flat by the great bull king himself, and then Sanzo had been there at his back, whispering—shouting, really—“Trust me.” And he felt the heavy seal on his forehead being lifted, and he became someone else. He didn’t remember any of that, and wasn’t entirely sure who had replaced it, because when he found Sanzo again, the monk was in no condition to have done so himself. 

Hakkai had fitted his own limiters on his ear with a clear head after the Minus Wave had been obliterated, and stalked through masses of bodies and body parts in search of a familiar face. Goku had watched, licking a wound on his arm and trying to move his leg, which was caught beneath debris from the crumbling castle. When the healer found Gojyo, crumpled up and bloody beneath an armed guard, also spattered in red, his face had twisted in agony, assuming the worst. Goku wondered if that was the way he’d looked when Kanan died, and thought that it might have been. He did love Gojyo, and that was just as evident in his elation when the kappa moved, revealing only a blow to the head and some minor lacerations, an inch or so deep. Hakkai healed them quickly, and only then did Goku call out. 

Hakkai mended him too, and Goku helped pry stones from his bloodied lower half; it only hurt for a moment, before throbbing green light enveloped him. It felt like Hakkai, but different just the same. He realized the man had removed a limiter to handle it.

“Where’s Sanzo?” Goku had whispered, knowing he couldn’t be among the bodies; he’d have seen the robes. Gojyo looked uncertain, and glanced over his shoulder at the castle’s remains.

“I saw him run in. After the sutra,” he hypothesized, running a dry tongue across drier lips. They hastened to it and broke apart to search, dodging survivors, knowing Kougaiji would be organizing his own men and putting them back in line. Hakkai risked the stairwell, and Gojyo, the dungeon. Goku darted through doorways until he came out into a courtyard beside a broken fountain that was leaking water from a series of hairline cracks along the base. Crumpled up beside it beneath a mass of coiled, untainted paper, he saw shocks of bloodied hair. 

“ _Sanzo_!”

They heard his cry, but by the time they arrived, already he was certain the priest was dead. Covered in gore, though not all his own, Sanzo seemed not to breathe. The damaged state of the room spoke of a battle, and the second sutra on his shoulders, untouched and much darker, made it a Pyrrhic victory. Goku knelt but didn’t risk touching him, only pressed his fingers just over Sanzo’s lips in search of breath. Later, he found a dull pulse beneath smears of drying blood and ragged pieces of ebony fabric. They looked like crows’ feathers. 

Hakkai ripped open his robes and peeled back layers of a still-writhing sutra, aghast at the state he was in, covered in dagger-like gouges and sitting in a quickly-growing puddle of blood. Goku saw why, the deep cut inside his thigh and dangerously near to his groin was gushing abnormally. It was the first thing Hakkai closed up, instructing Gojyo to search his scalp, for his hair was clotted with crimson. Goku might have screamed if he’d had a voice; Sanzo looked too quiet, too motionless. He wasn’t spewing insults—he’d always found energy for that, even when he’d taken a spear. Now he was only silent, smeared with blood and latticed with lacerations.

“He’s dying,” Hakkai spoke, terror springing back into his eyes. “I can’t heal everything at once!” But he was trying, plucking off one limiter after another in search of excess energy, frenzied. And there was blood—so much blood, the ferric tang smothering his sense of smell and resting on the back of his tongue where he would never scrape it out, seeping into his clothes and dyeing his skin like berries. And all he could think of was that Sanzo was going to die, and he’d never even told him. 

The jolt of hitting the hard granite floor shocked him awake, and he was staring into a velvet gaze. 

“Saru.” 

“Sanzo!”

He winced at the noise, but permitted sudden proximity, letting his eyes close without actually returning to sleep. 

“Won’t you eat something?”

“I’m not hungry,” he murmured, turning his head a few degrees on the pillow. “Just water. Or wine.”

“Water,” Goku insisted, bringing him a cupful and then helping him hold it up to his lips. Sanzo flushed, but accepted the aid grudgingly. Goku knew if it had been anyone else he would have rather gone thirsty. 

He drank, slowly, and seemed only to realize after he’d finished that his hands had wrapped about Goku’s, pressing them into the side of the earthenware vessel. 

“How long?”

“Over a week,” Goku murmured, eyes downcast. He hardly realized it was happening until he felt hot streaks running down the sides of his face and dripping off onto his shirt. Sanzo looked so tired, so pale, all his strength coming from his eyes. Turning away quickly, he fumbled with the tray of food as if arranging it, willing the tears to stop, and hoping Sanzo hadn’t seen. 

“Goku.” If it was a reprimand, it was surprisingly gentle. “Stop.” 

He turned with the tray and knelt again by the futon, “Y’should eat somethin’. Hakkai said—he said,” Goku tried again, forcing his breath to even itself out, “that you’ll be needin’ your energy.” It was too late now; he could feel slick tears curling down the curve of his cheeks, and the mild flicker of confusion and discomfort in Sanzo’s eyes said enough.

“’M sorry, Sanzo,” He heaved a sigh and ran his sleeve across his face in an attempt to dry it. “It’s just that you were hurt so bad—even Hakkai couldn’t heal you.”

“Obviously he did,” the monk answered levelly.

“But barely! God, Sanzo—it took a week for you just to wake up long enough to talk t’me! I thought you were—I thought you wouldn’t make it.” In his insistence, he’d plucked up the monk’s left hand, cradling it between his own, and Sanzo seemed to take a moment to recognize the fact before withdrawing it. 

“But I did,” he reasserted, not bothering to mask his confusion. Goku should have been over this by now. 

“Doesn’t mean I ain’t still scared. I’ve never seen you down so long—losin’ so much blood.”

“You’ve been here.” Sanzo said; it was not a question. Goku nodded. 

“Yeah. Every day. I sleep here, by you.” He added with a little half-shrug. “’N case you need somethin’ in the night. In case you wake up. At first, when I was afraid you wouldn’t…when you were real bad,” he euphemized, “Hakkai got mad, ‘cause I wouldn’t go. But I wanted to talk to you, be there when you woke up.”

“I’m awake now.” Sanzo pointed out, though he looked ready for sleep at any moment. 

“Yeah.” Goku smiled almost tentatively, and was it his imagination, or did Sanzo appear relieved by it?

“So say it. What you wanted to say.” The way he spoke, a gravelly voice that pointed to long disuse, reminded Goku of his condition. He wanted to tell him everything—beg him to stay, even when he knew. To stay at Keiun and to stay with him, not to be disgusted—to reciprocate, but if he couldn’t, at least not to leave him. But Hakkai had once told him how Sanzo was as fragile emotionally as he was stubborn physically. And he had no escape route, wounded as he was; it seemed almost selfish to force him to listen this way.

“I…you should eat,” Goku murmured instead, pressing the chilled bowl into his hand gently. A violet gaze flickered in resignation, and to the saru’s surprise, fingers clasped the edge, and Sanzo ate more than half, and took a slice of bread after, though he almost fell asleep eating it. 

“’M real glad you’re feelin’ better,” Goku whispered upon his return from the kitchen, elated by the quiet cheers from the other monks, who saw the half-emptied bowl. 

“Hn,” Sanzo sighed, still as death beneath the sheet with the sole exception of a gradual rise and fall of his chest. Goku ran the damp cloth over his forehead, but was shooed away good-naturedly, without the harisen. He doubted Sanzo could wield it yet. 

“Th’other monks’re happy too,” Goku said, folding his legs beneath him as he sank onto the straw pallet he had been using at night.

“I’m sure.” Sanzo muttered, less impressed with that morsel of news. “They threw my cigarettes out, didn’t they?”  
“No, that was Hakkai. But Gojyo took the wine,” he added, smirking at the way a fair brow crinkled in irritation. If he was well enough to be annoyed by the kappa, he was en route to recovery, to be sure.

“Where are they now?”

“They went back—to Gojyo’s place, I guess. Where they lived before.” What a connotation that simple preposition had taken on, he mused silently. Before. Before they met, became allies and enemies and then finally friends. Before they almost died a hundred times and came back in pieces, all strung about one another, each holding the other up.

“Together?” Sanzo asked, and the word seemed to carry as much weight as Before. Or Goku was reading too much into it. 

“Yeah.”

“Tch.” Sanzo closed his eyes, and Goku resisted the strong urge to smooth the skin of his forehead out, wipe away the pain and stress and let him sleep in peace. Surely, after saving the world, he deserved that much?  
“G’night Sanzo.”

There was a long pause, and then a soft sigh as he shifted in the sheets and the window’s shutters were drawn. He almost sensed a sort of inclination of the head. “Monkey.”

\------------

He woke to the sound of soft breathing, which was strange. Goku had long been a heavy sleeper—one he’d even slept right through an attack down an inn hallway. And Sanzo was just the opposite, ready to snap up and into action at the drop of a pin. Quickly he concluded that he woke of his own accord; there could not have been any noise at such an hour. By the position of the moon, he reckoned it four or five in the a.m. Hakkai had taught him that. 

Sanzo’s brow was still crinkled, as though he were deep in thought even in his dreams. He drew breath steadily, in and out, body hardly moving, and the moonlight pooled in pockets amongst the bed linens, making his skin glow wherever it touched. Skin he would never touch or kiss, never lay reverent or passionate hands on. The notion wasn’t foreign, but stung all the same, and he realized he’d wakened because he was restless. Sanzo was sound, so he slipped out the open window, not trusting the door’s hinges to stay silent. Clambering down the trellis with sure footing, his feet and hands avoiding tangles of flowering ivy, he landed neatly in the grass below and strode out to the orchard. 

The air of the night smelled profoundly different from that of the day, and it was not only his senses that picked up on it. He’d heard Gojyo remark much the same, and not because of his cigarette. True, there was a smoky smell to the dark air, as if everyone’s chimneys heaved nighttime sighs that sent their contents up only after the fires had been extinguished. But there was the rough scent of leaves and, this time of year, new growth, that saturated the air. Blossoms in the daytime, greenery at night, wet and waxy and strong enough to taste when the wind blew. 

Overhead arching tree branches blotted out the moonlight in streaks of black and grey, and a cicada here and there ventured a warning hum, quieting when he came too close. He could smell the peaches, if only faintly; they were nowhere near the way he liked them, red-orange and fat, bursting with juices that splattered when he bit through the thin skin. They were still firm and lightly fuzzed, the flesh inside hard and white with only a hint of the flavor they would later develop. Sanzo liked them like that, he recalled, hating when the fruit would drip into his hands, overripe and soggy enough to put on oats. 

The newer trees produced nothing but heady-scented blossoms, and some of the older ones had ladders leaning up against them in preparation of harvest, or to light the lanterns that clung to their lower branches, filled with melted wax or incense and echoes of prayers. Goku passed them by, though occasionally a branch would sway with the breeze and light up the pale color of golden flesh, gleaming like a beacon. But those weren’t the ones he wanted.

The orchard’s path led him almost in circles, and he knew it like the back of his hand despite his long absence. The trees looked smaller, but it was difficult to tell whether that was because dying ones had been replaced and stray branches pruned, or because he’s grown bigger. Breaking through the shadowed path and into moonlight, he saw one that hadn’t changed an iota from the image in his memory. It was the sacred tree, not part of the orchard, but an ancient offering to Lady Kanzeon, the very same Goku had climbed and fell from in his youth, the only one he’d dared steal peaches from, knowing Sanzo would protect him. 

She wouldn’t mind, he reasoned, seeing that she had left her ailing champion in his care with instructions to make him well again. Goku hopped the low fence—purely decorative—and danced cautiously through mounds of night-blooming jasmine that, when crushed, sent up a pungent dash of perfume beneath his nose. 

The bark was rough beneath his hands, and damp with morning dew, but he remembered every purchase, every foothold, and had little difficulty reaching the unripe fruit on the upper branches. Memories flickered up behind his eyelids each time he blinked, and looking down at the ground below, he saw a younger Sanzo standing in the sun, his mouth downturned in a scowl, though his eyes glinted with amusement. He could see both Past and Present, like a negative held over the real color of a photograph. 

_Come down._

He had been twelve in body, and it was Sanzo’s sole responsibility to keep track of him and bring him back to the fold each time he wandered. And like a put-upon shepherd, he had done so. 

_Do you want a peach, Sanzo?_

Even then, Goku had gotten lost while looking at him; the glowing color of his hair like the sun, and sharp, knowing eyes that only softened when he gazed right at them and smiled. He had never tired of that, though the significance of their exchanges had changed over time. 

Sanzo had almost-smiled then, slipping his hands out from the folds of long robes, smaller and less callused than he knew them to be now. _Just—come down!_

_If I do, will you stay? Eat a peach with me?_ Sanzo was always so busy with his temple duties.

He could feel him relent, rather than see it, and then Sanzo walked forward and slumped into a nook of ancient, gnarled roots, holding out his hand as Goku dropped the fruit onto the heel of his palm and slid down beside him. 

_They’re good aren’t they?_ He’d chattered, biting through three and licking the pits clean in the time it took Sanzo to consume one. He didn’t remember what they’d done afterwards—prayers, probably, or writing lessons. But he remembered the way Sanzo watched him over the curve of the fruit, innocently curious, and trusting, for one looking upon the child of the earth.

That part had never changed, and Goku realized the gaze might always be innocent, not knowing that his young charge wasn’t so young anymore, and his wants had changed. _But not really,_ Goku smiled. _I might want kisses instead of pats on the head, to share his bed to do more than chase away nightmares, but really it’s all the same reason. I just want him to stay with me._

Green stems never gave easily, but this one fell off almost before his palm had touched it, as if in assent. He leaped down onto worn and cracked flagstones, careful of the jasmine blossoms this time, lest he hear about it come morning from their grumpy groundskeeper, the very same who had chased him from the orchard in youth.

When he returned to the temple, the sun was easing itself up over the horizon, spilling light out into the distance like molten gold. Inside, Sanzo was awake, sitting up on his pallet with his night robe securely fastened, straight on either narrow shoulder. He’d not touched his breakfast, and was looking out, plainly surprised when Goku clambered over the sill.

“Mornin’.”

“Where were you?” 

“Outside,” Goku smiled and knelt beside the tray of ignored food, picking up a dull knife to slice through the firm flesh of the fruit, watching only scant droplets stain his hands. He drew the pit out with expertise, offering up half to Sanzo. “Want a peach?”

To his surprise Sanzo accepted, biting into it carefully, but his eyes never left Goku. He saw white teeth sink into the flesh, a light splash of juice on his upper lip. It was oddly intimate, but the spell broke quickly when Goku dropped the knife in surprise and it rattled against the clay bowl. He gave the monk a bashful smile, “Sorry.”

They ate in familiar, companionable silence, and the sun rose gradually outside the window, haloing Sanzo’s hair in light and making his own skin glow like newly-wrought bronze. He ate slowly, weighted with the burden of contemplation. When Sanzo healed—where would they go? Where would _he_ go?

_I can’t have you like I want you, but not to have you at all would be hell. Just don’t leave, and I’ll be your friend—charge—whatever you want, and I’ll never reach for anything more. I can be happy like this, just around you, if you’ll have me._  
“Thanks.” Sanzo broke his thought when he finished his half of the peach, 

Goku looked surprised; he had only been pleased that Sanzo ate _something_. “You—you’re welcome. I know you like ‘em before they’re ripe.” Sanzo was looking at him funny again, in the way that made him too conscious of himself, of something he might be doing wrong. Fingers sticky with juice, he reached for the linen napkin on the lacquered tray, and a strong hand grasped his wrist, drawing it back, and up.

Sanzo pressed a kiss over his fingertips, feather-light, and Goku forgot to breathe. 

_Sanzo?_

“Yes.” He said softly, answering the unspoken question as though he’d heard it. Maybe he had—Sanzo heard a lot of things. 

His tongue flicked out, cautious in all things, and dipped between knuckles, tracing smooth lines over callused, brown hands. Goku felt his heart jerk in his chest, stomach clenching hard as he willed his body to remain perfectly still, unable to move for fear that Sanzo would remember himself and draw back and away, leaving him there breathless and torn between right and want. 

But he didn’t. 

The hand on his wrist didn’t loosen, but tightened, drawing him forward and onto the clean, cool bedding beside him; a palm came to rest on his chest, trailing over his shoulder as if he’d never seen him before, and wanted to memorize every line. Sanzo looked—uncertain. Nervous, maybe. Goku wondered if he’d ever made love before, or even kissed, and doubted it. Sanzo had been so consumed by vengeance and hatred that they had snuffed out the potential for any other emotion. But now, with Ukoku dead and two sutras under his command, he was released of that burden and surrounded by sensations he’d smothered for years. Goku thought taking all that in at once would make anyone afraid. It would only complicate things if he opened his mouth, if he told him just how long—

“Come.” Sanzo murmured, drawing him closer, and Goku obeyed, leaning to him and letting the blond pull him into a novice kiss, their mouths meeting with great caution, awkwardly at first, until Sanzo tilted his head and put a hand at his nape. He bore them down to the sheets so slowly that Goku didn’t realize where they were going until he felt Sanzo’s pillow beneath his head and cool, strong hands pushing up under his shirt and over his skin.

_Oh, Sanzo._

He must have heard it, because it provoked a moan, soft and low, the way Goku had imagined he might sound, so different from his wounded groans. They had to be careful—he was still full of stitches and bound in several places. Goku wondered if he was in pain, knowing he would never divulge it if he were.

As if to prove him wrong, Sanzo lowered himself carefully so that the full length of his body pressed against Goku’s as they kissed, heated and messy and _hungry_ , and the taste of peaches passed between them carrying myriad memories.   
They unbound one another’s clothing with slow, gentle motions; Sanzo was breathing hard, nervous or excited, he couldn’t tell, and then they were naked. The monk was not what someone would call classically handsome—beautiful was better—his body was thin, especially now, raked over by injury, but he bore his scars pleasingly over corded muscle and sharp, uninviting angles. Goku thought he was perfect and wound himself about him, taking care where he had been mended. When he felt damp, hard heat pressing into the small of his thigh, sharp breath escaped him, both of pleasure sudden realization. Sanzo desired him. Wanted to be his lover. 

_Lovers_. The word made him ache. They were lovers now—almost—Goku tried not to cry out when Sanzo moved in him, tried to tangle himself up in sunny hair and snowy skin, showing him how much he loved it, how much he wanted it.   
_Oh. Sanzo, please._

For never having done it, or at least not often or recently, Sanzo felt wonderful. They moved at a slow, rocking pace; Goku could hear Sanzo’s knees slide against the bedding each time they joined and the crinkling of fabric when his toes curled in pleasure. His breathing was deep but not steady, made sporadic by long, eager kisses that would leave them coupled to the hilt, Sanzo’s body touching something hot and sensitive inside him that made his skin prickle with satisfaction. 

A soft moan, buried at his throat and emerging like velvet, indicated his own fulfillment; there was a surge of heat between his thighs, and Sanzo shuddered and moved off of him, one hand lingering between his legs and stroking until Goku felt it too.   
They didn’t speak, at least not out loud, and it wasn’t necessary. Dark hands tangled in light hair, drawing him close in a possessive kiss that he surmised himself permitted now. Sanzo didn’t balk, only returned the intimacy, though he’d withdrawn his embrace, lying on his side to catch his breath when their mouths drew apart. 

Goku wanted to tell him he was beautiful, and he’d give anything to kiss him like that again, to be had and taken pleasure from and wanted. The back of Sanzo’s fingertips stroked his shoulder and then fell away, and his eyes fluttered closed in a way that indicated rest but not sleep. Goku drew the covers up farther yet, from his waist to halfway up his chest, and folded the tangled cotton garment he’d struggled out of moments ago. 

He still wanted to say I love you, to say thank you, but thought now might be too soon, seeing that it took Sanzo so many years to make it to this. But he could wait. If Sanzo would have him, he would wait another decade, another century, whatever it took until he was ready. No one knew by looking, but Goku was truly a patient soul. He’d waited five hundred years for freedom, hadn’t he? 

If there was a chance he would linger, look at him in love again, if there was time, he would say it, tell him everything. 

_If, if…_

The sun was spilling like glowing water over the tile of the floor, chasing out dark dimples of shadow in the niches of the wall. Goku fastened his shirt and reached for the tray to return it, surprised when he found Sanzo’s fingers wrapped about his wrist again, drawing him back. Violet eyes were open, and very intent on his, watching him the way he used to in the orchard, but with something new. 

“Stay.” Sanzo said, and Goku smiled.

Yes, there would be time. 

 

-Fin-


End file.
